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Beware, for this post is dark and full of spoilers for Game of Thrones Seasons 1-7 . strong>

Valar morghulis, friends. You’ve only penetrated Mashable’s Citadel, where we are Rewatching for the Throne , dissecting Game of Thrones season by season to prepare for the final six episodes beginning on April 14.

Here are all the best Season 4 hypothesis, unanswered questions, unresolved patches, and forgotten morsels you need to remember before winter comes for the endgame in Season 8.

Who can forge Valyrian steel?

Season 4 shall begin with Tywin softening down the Stark family Valyrian sword Ice down into two swords for House Lannister( afterwards listed Widow’s Wail and Oathkeeper ).

This is a slight reminder that Valyrian sword — the only thing that can kill White Walkers — is not extremely rare, but too that only a few people in the world know how to re-forge it. Tywin tells Jaime he hired a blacksmith in Volantis, but in the books it’s actually Gendry’s mentor, Tobho Mott, who dominates the rare acquaintance and magic needed for this skill.

Since Gendry returned to the show in Season 7, a long-standing philosophy is that he will use his what he learned from Mott to go a step further than merely reworking. The stockpile of dragonglass being forged in a brief scene from the Season 8 trailer seems to all but confirm that Gendry will forge the first brand-new Valyrian steel weapons since the Doom of Valyria.

And they’ll need it.

Everything we learned from the White Walker transformation

One of the largest places from Season 4( if not the part sequence) is something we never read in the books: the White Walkers on their home turf.

In the scene where Craster’s last son is sacrificed as a “gift to the gods, ” a White Walker takes him to what we can presume is The Lands of Always Winter. It’s the part of the delineate no humans ever dare depart, where the White Walkers hung out for thousands of years since the first Long Night. It’s likewise perhaps where they retained Craster’s transformed sons( and any other sacrificed humen) safe, invoking them to maturity or until they’re more engagement ready.

What this Season 4 background with the baby at the vary gave us a glimpse into is how the White Walkers aren’t just some mindless misery. They have their own practices, history, involves, and even culture in a sense. Inarguably, it proved their point isn’t only the slaughter of all humans because, actually, they seem to need humans( alive humans, since the zombie-like wights are different) so as to create more of their own manner.

This culminated in a fan-favorite assumption that the White Walkers’ real goal is to protect themselves from extinguishing, either due to the return of security threats like the dragons or to a declining numbers of human sacrifices to keep their population strong.

In general, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of White Walkers left. The most we’ve ever seen together is in this Season 4 vistum, where twelve stand in the background as the Night King acts the conversion. We’ve never seen any female White Walkers, preceding us to believe this transformation process is their exclusively current means of replication( read more in our Season 2 round up ).

The fact that thirteen White Walkers are present here could have its own meaning, but we’ll get to that in our upcoming Season 5 round up.

Many fans believing that, despite what we’ve been lead to believe, the White Walkers won’t be defeated in conflict, but preferably with a peace treaty. It’s also most likely what happened the first time they came here during the course of its mythical Long Night, striking some sort of agreement with the humans to stay on their surface of the Wall in the Lands of Always Winter.

I mean, isn’t that more plausible than the tales of The Last Hero or Azhor Ahai, which claim that a single person demolished them in engagement? And isn’t it more logical that the humen who can do ice magic constructed the Wall themselves, rather than the delusion that it was has been established by human beings and monstrous?

Some even believe that the Night’s Watch was first created to ensure this peace was maintained between human beings and the White Walkers. Which creates us to the lore of the Night’s King.

Who is Melisandre, and how much of her magic is a subterfuge?

After the Season 6 reveal, we know that Melisandre has been using glamour this whole time to cover up the facts of the case “that shes” centuries old.

But another vital representations happens in Season 4, when she justifies to Selyse in the bathroom bathtub that, “Most of these powders and tonics are lies. Ruses to realise followers think they witnessed our Lord’s capability. Once they step into his sunrise, they’ll experience the lie for what it was- a stunt that preceded them to the truth.”

Who is Melisandre, really?

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Most believe that Melisandre believes in her make, but are generating apparitions in the flame that pass parties like Stannis to do what she feels they must do. But in general, don’t be quick to rely what any of the Red Priests demo other people in the flame.

As for who Melisandre genuinely is , there’s no solid polemics that would be relevant to the show.

But her senility, whether a pair hundred or several hundred years old, wants she was alive at the high levels of the Targaryen dynasty. This could shape her one of Dany and Jon’s most vital allies as far understanding their fervour wizard and dragons — potentially even helping them raise a new dragon from stone.

What did the Three-Eyed Raven aim when he said Bran would wing?

One key phrase that fans keep coming back to is the Three-Eyed Raven’s assertion to Bran that, “You will never walk again. But you are able to fly.”

Now, this could easily only be represented in a supernatural appreciation, with Bran piloting through history or even flying as a slew of ravens in one moment during Season 7. But it’s too very like George R. R. Martin to utter a utterance like this several meanings.

What will come of the Arya/ Hound reunion?

It’s easy to forget, but the Hound was one of the first beings on Arya’s kill list. Yet when last they were together, Arya repudiated his plea for her to kill him and instead left him to die gradually on a elevation side.

He didn’t die, as we are familiar with. Actually, from the seems of the latest Season 8 trailer, he’s now at Winterfell. And so is Arya.

Do we dare hope for a cozy Arya and Hound reunion

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What will their reunion look like? Arya’s not one to show mercy to a person on her roster.

But in Season 6, she mentions the Hound twice during her course with the Faceless Men. She claims to hate him, but Jaqen accuses her of consist. Afterwards when the Waif questions her about the Hound, Arya says she didn’t kill him because she’d made him off her register, and didn’t genuinely crave him dead anymore.

The Hound seemed to glow with a sense of pride when Brienne told him that Arya’s become a genuine fighter in the Season 7 finale. So it’s clear he contains no hard feelings toward her.

Tyrion might not be a Lannister, and is actually trade secrets Targaryen

A loping joke is that just about everyone is a secret Targaryen, from Varys to Craster. But when it is necessary to Tyrion, there are just highway too many sly intimates to ignore.

Throughout his Season 4 arc with Tywin, Tywin says every variant of “you are not my son” imaginable. There’s a lot more textual is proved that Tyrion’s Season 1 assertion that, “All midgets are mongrels in their father’s eyes, ” is literal. He could very well be a rascal of Dany’s father, Mad King Aerys.

Throughout the books, people talk about how King Aerys frankly craved after Joanna Lannister, Tywin’s wife. It is almost certain he had copulation with her at least once. Rumor has it that before she married Tywin, Joanna was Aerys’ mistress, and eventually rejected as the Queen’s lady-in-waiting for that reason. Then there’s the story of how Aerys took “liberties” with Joanna during the bedding formality of her and Tywin’s wedding.

All of this set the precedent, but the timing wouldn’t make sense, since Joanna was never around Aerys much after that. Until George R. R. Martin made a part in A World of Ice and Fire to state that Joanna attended a festivity in honour of Aerys reign in 272 AC. He publicly attained notes on Joanna’s hearts and, subsequently for uncharted reasonableness, Tywin tried to resign as Hand of the King.

A little under a year later, Tyrion was born. And some can’t assistance but speculate that his “deformities” were caused by incestuous Targaryen genes.

The Tyrion Targaryen would bring his courage full circle

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The show only included fuel to the flares in Season 6 when Tyrion had a entire vistum with Daenerys’ pissed off dragons, unchaining them. We cannot be stressed how poorly this should’ve gone for Tyrion. The happening that they abode him is some of the most wonderful proof to assistance that they ability his Targaryen blood.

The biggest drawback to this theory is that fans aren’t sure why it’d even thing at this level if Tyrion were a Targaryen.

Before Season 7, the hypothesi is that he’d be the “third head of the dragon, ” AKA he’d ride Viserion while Jon would take Rhaegal and Dany would continue to dominate with Drogon. But Viserion is gone now. And there’s not enough bonding time in the nations of the world that would manufacture him able to be ridden by Tyrion.